I have no shame.. Yes, thats me dualboxing Rofl and myself in the AFKave. I normally do participate in the battles in the other battlegrounds.. but AV has become very boring.
There was a time in which an AV game had no time limit.. A place of refuge that all hunters could go to in order to do what we do best.. Sit back and unload. There was a time when you could have over one thousand honorable kills, several million damage, and two hundred killing blows in one single game(stats taken from my experience while doing warlord grind on my orc...).. That would double my dwarfs total killcount as of yet. But what is it now? The games last 7 minutes on average, comparable to several games which I have seen last several days.
There is no PvP. 40 alliance run straight to Iceblood Garrison, passing but 100 feet from 40 horde running to Stonehearth. You cannot stay and defend, less you have a premade of about 10 people, unless you plan on getting slaughtered.. Any Horde who stays to defend their base share a similar fate.. and mowing down 5 people behind 30 friends is far from entertaining. The only real way to get some good honest PvP is when Rofl and I either stay at the base of IB to intercept stragglers that died and are returning to the front, in which they will usually fight back and usually have more than one.. or to go to stonehearth bunker right after the horde moves on to stormpike.. in which case we can get a good fight on the 2-5 horde defending it.
It is very common to see first place having three killing blows now. AV is small-scale at best, and is NOT what AV is supposed to be. Every now and then you get a small turtle but in the end it is just a small group holding them off the cap at either the Aid station, or the Relief hut, and it is quickly overcome either by the attackers or the loss of reinforcements.
I used to have a strategy in which I would follow up behind the horde and recap everything, killing all who stayed behind as I went.. until eventually the horde is all stuck fighting the alliance at iceblood, and it just goes from there to push the horde into their base. Then we could get a nice.. hour at most, fragfest in which a hunter really has time to enjoy his class. But on my old hunter... I ran BG's for fun.. not for gear. Now I need the gear so I would rather the game be won faster.. and it is won. Alliance almost always wins. So, here I am. At the AFKave, because there is no point in even fighting, I can follow the zerg around killing NPCs, or I can do nothing.. and in the end, the result is exactly the same.
I know.. If everyone did what I do.. the game would be lost.. but for some reason they don't.. They all must get a rise out of killing NPCs, and come to a BG to do that.. In fact.. when I would try to go PvP at SH and recap things.. they would actually yell at you to stop it, because that would lead to them actually having to PvP! How DARE I initiate PvP in a battleground!
AB on the other hand is a lot different. I love AB, and always have since I grinded many hours away getting to Warlord in there. It is a good battleground. You can get nicely sized 10+ vs 10+ fights, moderate 6v6's and 4v4's small 2v2s and plenty of 1vX's if you bother to go find them. You are also free to do whatever you want in AB.. It is very possible to go solo to one base and kill the 2-3 defenders quickly and cap the flag.. as opposed to WSG where you are forced to kill a 50k armor, 20k hp bear who is unstoppable by any slowing abilities, and is hell bent on getting that flag to the other side while destroying everything in its path and has multiple healers on it even though it can probably heal himself just as well, and if you stop to DPS the healer, the bulldozer bear can get to the other side before the healers are even close to low on mana, and then you get a turtle fest which is no fun at all.. WSG goes against years of PvP experience in which everyone is trained to "Kill the squishies first" and instead "Kill the most heavily armored, stongest, individual first!" I don't like it. I like AB where I have free reign to pop every mage I want. AB also isn't as long as WSG, but it is long enough for a decent chunk of PvP without it becoming redundant and it is different every time. In AV, you know exactly what happens.. They all rush past eachother.. Horde to SH, Ally to IB. In AB sometimes, they go LM, sometimes they go Mine, sometimes they even rush stables... and then sometimes you are in a group who rode the short bus and no one capped stables on alliance.
Unfortunatley, AB almost always loses while you are pugging... which is why I am in the AFKave.
Eye of the storm is just horrid.. I cringe every time I have to get new boots. Eye of the storm is a perfect example of blizzards way of taking all their old ideas, mixing them together to create something new and shiny, and terrible. The bases are lost by sheer numbers, and are unable to be retained no matter how good the players defending are, unlike in AB where two skilled players can hold off 5-7 attackers. You can't do that in EoTS, the base just loses control. It also has a flag.. the only real fun I can ever have in that battleground is when the game has become a stalemate, two bases to two, and both teams are in the middle, just killing each other.
I have high hopes for the new BG in WoTLK.. If you havent heard of it, it is basically a D-Day scenario in which one team attacks a coastal keep by sea and the other team defends it. This is new in battlegrounds.. it is a scenario in which both sides do NOT start off on level turf. They are doing the same thing in Arenas. Also, this most likely means the sides will not always be the same, and you will sometimes be attacking, and sometimes be defending. This also seems like a good scenario in which a hunter can lay out some massive damage in a fragfest. The keep should also be interesting, as they are implementing siege weaponry to use. This means that unlike everything else that ever was in WoW.. the fortifications will actually have DOORS that the attackers have to break and can't just rush in. The same in a entire world-pvp zone that they are adding in, in which there will be keeps to take and defend in the world. This is a promising world-pvp setup, earlier all world pvp ideas that have been implemented are all just in zones that people go to in order to quest or grind, not to PvP, but anyone who comes to this zone will be for PvP only, and if there are people there, there will always be a constant supply of PvP. It also brings in to relief which many have felt killed a lot of the fun in WoW.. X realm Bg's.. In the world PvP zone.. It will be from the same server, and have the same people every time. Unlike in BG's where you see a new set of people every game, here people will be recognized, and groups of players will be known. Every server had their own kickass PvP guild before X-realm BG's that everyone knew they were going to lose to when they saw the opponents roster fill up with them. It will be the same in here. Killing people you know is always more fun than killing randoms.
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